Research

Research Aims

The research aim of Project Feed 1010 is to optimize aquaponic systems (aquaculture + hydroponics), which can recycle up to 98% of water and nutrients to support year‐round crop production within repurposed land, including backyards, rooftops, and high‐rises in an urban setting.

OUR GOALS ARE TO:

Identify the composition and function of microbial assemblages that facilitate key processes essential to plant growth, disease resistance, and biogeochemical cycling across time in aquaponics.

Standardize, automate, and democratize these systems so they can be widely disseminated across the network at low cost

Pioneer the development of inference engines that will mine and discover disparate patterns for improving yield and quality of produce, while providing real‐time actionable feedback to aquaponics farmers.

Given that this is a multifactorial optimization problem, the power of crowdsourcing is precisely what is required to test the multitudes of combinations of environmental variables (e.g., temperature, light, humidity, etc.), nutritional compositions (e.g., N, P, S, trace metals, etc.), types of fish and plants, and even the composition of the plant, water, and fish microbiomes. Students, scientists, teachers, farmers, and citizens can participate in this network to accelerate optimization of this proven sustainable agriculture system.

To become a citizen scientist with PF1010, purchase or build an aquaponic system (here are some ideas), and collect water chemistry and plant growth data (like these). Upload that data into your system profile on our open-access, online data-management hub (https://pf1010.systemsbiology.net/), where you can also compare their systems with others around the world and socialize with other citizen scientists.

WHY SYSTEMS BIOLOGY?

Systems biology is a holistic approach to deciphering complexity that’s based on the understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It has been responsible for some of the most important developments in the science of wellness and environmental sustainability. Plants and fish have some of the most complex genomes and species diverse microbiomes. It is imperative that Project Feed 1010 apply the systems biology approach to unravel from a multidimensional big data space the network of networks of tens of thousands of genes within trillions of plant, fish and microbial cells.